"Not that I
condone fascism, or any 'ism' for that matter. 'Ism's' in my opinion are not
good. A person should not believe in an 'ism', he should believe in
himself."

Ferris Bueller in 'FERRIS
BUELLER'S DAY OFF'

I must confess something here dear readers
(and I hope my mother is not reading this): I am guilty of accentuating
an illness in order to remain absent from school. Okay, fine…I have
downright faked an illness a few times in my youth to garner an almighty
mini-vacation from school. Anyone that says that they have never done so -
not once - are seriously deluding themselves. Everyone has done it
at some time or another in their childhood or adolescence. That’s what
makes the transition to adulthood so invigorating. We grow up (well, most
of us), put our priorities together, and develop a sense of responsibility.
When you’re an angst-ridden tyke with a modest rebellious side, playing
hooky seems pretty consequence free and fun…as long as you can get away
with it.

There are some that are pretty idle and
nonchalant about skipping school, and then there are teenagers like Ferris
Bueller, who take truancy and treat it like a science. In his mind, faking
an illness is not something to be taken lightly. It’s not something you
just wake up and do; rather, there is a specific technique to the
whole enterprise. At one point in John Hughes’ 1986 comedy, FERRIS
BUELLER’S DAY OFF, the young hoodwinker breaks the fourth wall and speaks
directly to the audience and reveals his age-old secrets to successfully
cutting class (I am sure that, as an adult, Ferris would easily make a
fortune writing “Skipping School for Dummies”, but I digress).

Ferris has got his skills down to every
miniscule level. He offers up his classic system of getting your parents to
believe your sob-induced illness. “The key to faking out the parents,”
Ferris reveals, “is the clammy hands. It's a good non-specific symptom; I'm
a big believer in it. A lot of people will tell you that a good phony
fever is a dead lock, but, uh... you get a nervous mother, you could wind up
in a doctor's office. That's worse than school. You fake a stomach
cramp, and when you're bent over, moaning and wailing, you lick your palms.
It's a little childish and stupid, but then, so is high school.” Ferris
needs these methods. At the beginning of the film he admits that he is
now missing his ninth sick day of the semester, so he has to make this ninth
absence really count. “Next one I want I’ll have to barf up a lung,”
he humorously tells us.

This is the overall premise to FERRIS
BUELLER’S DAY OFF, a wonderfully droll and sharp 1980’s comedy that came
from the man who had the market cornered for teen angst and insubordination,
John Hughes. In terms of 1980’s cinema, he could arguably take claim to
making this type of youth market film genre all his own. For a very brief
period during this decade, Hughes carved out a niche for himself for making
sensitive, empathetic, and whimsical portraits of the modern adolescent.

He started his comedic career as a writer for
more decidedly adult fare in MR. MOM and NATIONAL LAMPOON’S VACATION
until he saw his calling for abandoning adult characters and focused on
those just traveling through puberty. Early forays, like SIXTEEN CANDLES in
1984 and his landmark THE BREAKFAST CLUB in 1985, demonstrated his unique
sensibilities with understanding how young people perceived the world around
them. Some critics have gone on record for saying that Hughes pandered down
to teens for exploitation value, whereas others labeled him as a smart and
insightful voice that understood them. Perhaps a little of both of those
sentiments are true.

Most of his media branded Brat Pack
films definitely work as memorable entertainments because of his knack for
getting inside the general malaise that most teens (both then and now)
suffer through. He allowed them to comment on their situation openly
and honestly (to his credit, not too many youth market films allowed for
this). On the other hand - and at the expense of his singular gift for
breathing life into his teen personas - his adult characters really
suffered. By comparison, the mature authority figures in these films were
essentially witless, moronic, and unsympathetic stooges that had no idea
what was going on with their children. This can easily been seen in THE
BREAKFAST CLUB, a meditation on how all teens are misunderstood by their
unscrupulous parents and teachers. One only has to wonder how great this
film (other other Hughes offerings) could have been if they allowed for a
more socially bipartisan.

However, saying that may be missing the point
of these films. FERRIS BUELLER, much like Hughes’ other youth films, never
promises to be excursions into how the adult mindset works. The film is a
sweet, lightweight, and good-natured farce on the teen mindset. Yes,
Bueller and all of his Bueller-aholics see parents and teachers as mindless
drones, but that’s beside the point. The film is from Bueller’s point of
view, not from the prerogative of his parents or teachers. Honestly, anyone that was a
teenager certainly can remember not liking teachers or parents. At
that time they were the embodiment of stern rules and authoritarian values.
To a naïve and fiercely independent teenager, why would you like them?

Perhaps that’s what makes FERRIS BUELLER a
film cut from a bit of a different mould than other teen-angst flicks. This
film is completely 180 degrees removed from, say, THE BREAKFAST CLUB. Those
teens were troubled, apathetic, unruly, and genuinely despised their
peers and parents. Not Bueller. There is a kindness and affability
that permeates the character. He does not hate his peers, teachers, or
mother and father. He skips school a lot, but he does not do so because
he’s a raging rebel without a cause. “Life moves pretty fast,” he states at
one point, “if you don’t stop to look around once in awhile, you could miss
it.” What his absenteeism really boils down to is having fun. There is no
deep or penetrating message he is trying to send out to the masses. More
than anything, Bueller actually sacrifices getting into serous trouble to
help out his buddy, the hapless Cameron, so that he can learn to like and
respect himself.

That’s the angle that I have always liked
about the film. I discovered the film (as many people my age had) during
the infancy of the home video format. I watched the film dozens of times in
my early teens and found it to be hilarious. I think that, as an adult
viewer twenty years later, I respond to it a bit differently. Sure, the
film’s broad, physical comedy still plays okay, but underneath it is a sweet
and tender story about friendship and one friend trying to instill in his
best buddy the notion that, hey, get out of Depressionville and start
enjoying life. This is not an easy task, and Ferris knows it. Cameron
lives in a life of rich luxury (his father owns an expensive home and has a
vintage, custom made Ferrari as his toy). His father’s materialism haunts
the young Cameron ("My father loves that car more than life itself", he
tells Ferris, “It is his love, it his passion”). Cameron loves his father,
but hates his affluent and greedy impulses. His dad puts his restored
sports car on a pedestal of worship. In a way, Cameron only wishes that he
could achieve such a lucrative spot in his dad’s heart.

So, it’s Ferris (played memorably by a young
Matthew Broderick) to Cameron’s (Alan Ruck) rescue. Ferris, after
all, is the cool and smooth-talking foil to Cameron’s indifferent and droopy
moodiness. Realizing that his best friend needs him, Ferris sets the stage
in motion to con his parents and teachers into getting the day off so he,
his girlfriend (Mia Sara) and Cameron can take a pleasure cruise through
Chicago and take in some the scenery. Most kids that want to stay home from
school would be fine just staying home and letting TV and video games
pollute their minds. Bueller is too intelligent, cultured, and dignified
for that. He wants to take his friends out for a day on the town,
and do so in style. This, of course, leads one to believe that Ferris
should easily be spotted and caught red handed if he makes himself
public on a “sick day.” Yet, one of the funniest running gags in the film
is how he effortlessly avoids being caught. At one point he jumps up on top
of a float during Chicago’s annual Von Steuben Day Parade and lip synchs The
Beatles’ “Twist and Shout.” This guy’s got confidence - and a lot of balls
- I’ll give him that. You just have to respect his energy and
liveliness.

Getting out on the town is not totally easy
for Ferris and his pals. He engages in a very, very elaborate
charade that, if I get this straight, involves fooling his parents; fooling
his teachers; faking his girlfriends’ grandmother’s death; faking an
answering machine for the mortuary where the grandmother is; faking the
girlfriends’ dad over the phone and actually impersonating him to pick her
up from school; and…I almost forgot...hacking into the school’s computer in
order to change his 9 days of truancyto 2. “I asked for a
car, and I got a computer,” Ferris deadpans to the audience. Ethan Hunt and
his comrades from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE could definitely respect this kid and
his resourcefulness.

There is one big catch to Ferris’s scheme.
Actually, there are two. First, he has to convince the endlessly
depressed Cameron to get out of bed and have a good time (“Cameron is so
tight that if you stuck a lump of coal up his ass, in two weeks you’d have a
diamond"). Well, he manages to do so by appealing to his friend’s good side, but
there’s the problem of picking up his girlfriend from school. Well, Ferris
achieves the impossible by convincing Cameron to let them take his dad’s
1961 Ferrari GT250. Why? Maybe because the school’s principal, Mr.
Rooney (Jeffrey Jones, hammy it up to one dimensional perfection) would
never believe that a rich family would come to school in a clunker like
Cameron’s car. They do take the car, but Cameron reveals that his dad
precisely knows the mileage. “That’s easy to fix,” Bueller explains, “We’ll
drive home backwards!” Humour aside, there is a sense of dark foreshadowing
with the trio talking the car. Anyone who has studied Cinematic
Clichés 101 will be able to predict with lightning speed that the
priceless car will
not make it back in one piece.

Regardless, Ferris shows his friends the time
of their lives. He is able to smooth talk them into a fancy and posh
restaurant by impersonating the “Sausage King of Chicago”, visit the Sears
Tower, go to the Board of Trade Building, catch a Chicago Cubs game (there
is cute gag here where Ferris is shown on TV catching a foul ball, but – of
course – his principal just misses it), and – in one of the more
interesting bits – they all go to the Art Institute to look at priceless
works of art. There is an inspired moment where Cameron is transfixed in
one particular pointillist work, "Sunday Afternoon on the Island by La
Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat, where Hughes allows the camera to zoom in
close enough to see the individual brush marks.

Clearly, this Ferris hosted travelogue has
its moments of introspection. One particular scene at the Sears Tower
-
where the three look directly down to the streets and notice that the cars
look like insects - releases Cameron’s ambivalence and lack of meaning in his
life and family (“I’ll give you two reasons why you should not get married,”
he tells Ferris, “my mother and father”). Ferris knows his friend suffers,
which culminates in him crashing a parade. I mean, this guy will go to any
length to amuse his friends. The film has gets a considerable amount of
mileage showcasing the friends cavorting around from one fun setting to
another, even if it’s at the expense of some heavy-handed and forced
philosophical mumbo-jumbo. Ferris is a cunning, smart, and ingenious young
man, but some of his pontificating is not all that inspired (“Cameron has
never been in love - at least, nobody's ever been in love with him. If
things don't change for him, he's gonna marry the first girl he lays”).

If there is a counterpoint to the trio’s
shenanigans it’s the ruthlessness of the Rooney’s attempts to catch Ferris
in the act. As a child watching the film I ate up the cartoonish
buffoonery of the Jones character, who basically becomes a revenge driven
stalker who will lower himself to absolute rock bottom to stop Ferris once
and for all. “Last thing I need at this point in my career,” he tells his
secretary, “is fifteen hundred Ferris Bueller disciples running around these
halls. He jeopardizes my ability to effectively govern this student body.”
She dryly responds, “He makes you look like an ass, is what he does.”

That’s the film’s ultimate mindset to anyone
over 30 years old. Essentially, they
are figures that have no polish, refinement, or genuine understanding. The
Hughes adult figures in these types of films have always been cold, distant,
and dumb (which is somewhat offensive, in an innocuous kind of way). There
is some pleasure to be derived out of watching the teachers force their
students into a state of a complete lethargic bore. In one the most
remembered and beloved moments of any comedy from the 80’s, the great Ben
Stein - playing a dry and sleep-inducing economics teacher - does his
iconic role call in the morning (“Bueller? Bueller? Bueller?”). He then
engages in the film’s most hilarious moment where he gives a lecture on
Voodoo Economics and the Great Depression. Stein, interestingly enough, has
a master degree in economics from Columbia University and was told by Hughes
to improvise the lecture. What results is the film’s most sidesplitting
moment.

Considering that Hughes wrote the script in
just five days, FERRIS BUELLER is quite a decently paced and polished film.
In terms of narrative, not much really happens. The film is effectively a
series vignettes of Bueller escaping authority figures, treating his friends
to a great day, and Rooney engaging in scheme after scheme to get Ferris
with the success rate of a Wilie Coyote. Other figures drop in here and
there (like a very funny performance by pre-DIRTY DANCING’s Jennifer Grey as
Ferris’ mean spirited sister). There is a nice little scene with her
and a drug addict at a police station, played by none other than Charlie
Sheen, who actually stayed up 48 hours straight to give his five minute
cameo as a stoner the right look. Now that's dedication.

Yet, make no mistake about it, the film works
because of the performances. Alan Ruck, who was nearly 30 when he played
the 18 year-old Cameron, is effectively deprecating and sad as the
beleaguered teen, but it is Matthew Broderick’s innate charisma,
effervescent charm, and vitality that gives the film it’s spunk. Ferris is
the type of teen rebel we all want to be. He’s not mean-spirited; he
actually cares about those around him and does a sincere amount of
apologizing when he makes mistakes. He, unlike other Hughes teens, loves
his parents and family and actually does not lambaste about how cruel the
world is and how badly his parents misunderstand him. The most refreshing
part of FERRIS BUELLER is the fact that the title character is a teen that’s
not vile, spiteful or world weary. He loves what a nice, sunny day will
bring him and his friends. Sure, he willfully defies authority, but
Broderick paints him as such an amiable and agreeable rogue that its
impossible not to root for him. When he looks into the camera and tells the
audience his philosophical mutterings on life and his place in the world, he
does so with such a swagger and poise that we start to believe him.

Broderick is an actor that, thankfully, did
not get caught up in playing sly, fast-talking teen roles for the rest of
his career. His post-BUELLER resume is amazingly dense. He went on to star
as a young military inductee in 1987’s controversial PROJECT X, a World War
II boot camp cadet in Neil Simon’s BILOXI BLUES, a grandson to Sean Connery’s life criminal in 1989’s FAMILY BUSINESS, and a Civil War leader in
GLORY of the same year. Perhaps his most serendipitous post-BUELLER work
was his turn in one of the most underrated films of the 1990’s in Alexander
Payne’s high school satire ELECTION. That was the anti-Hughes film in that
it focused on the teachers and adult characters first where Broderick
played, ironically, a teacher. In a way, he sort of came full circle with
the film.

Hughes himself perhaps did not fare as well
as Broderick. He jumped ship from doing more teen-centric films and made
some very respectable films in 1987’s SOME KIND OF WONDERFUL (which he
wrote) and PLANES TRAINS AND AUTOMOBILES from the same year (which he wrote
and directed). After peaking in the mid-eighties, Hughes allowed himself to
flounder in a long series of brainless and juvenile comedies, like 1988’s
THE GREAT OUTDOORS, 1990’s HOME ALONE (which amazingly became an all-time
box office money maker), 1991’s DUTCH, and so on. His last directorial
effort was 15 years ago in 1991’s CURLY SUE. Arguably, after making a
considerable amount of fluff over the past decade, it could be said that
Hughes past his prime ages ago.

Yet, 20 years after its release, FERRIS
BUELLER’S DAY OFF still remains one of Hughes' more appealing and funny teen
films. It proudly showcases a young Matthew Broderick in his career
making turn as super smart and crafty adolescent who outthinks everyone
around him to get a highly lucrative day off of school. The film’s head
may be vacant at times (some of the comedy emerges as uncomfortably broad
and slapsticky to the point of overkill, and the adult characters are
developed as unsophisticated societal rejects), but there is no denying that
the heart is in the underlining material. Ferris Bueller is a
kinder, softer, and more affable type of teen dissenter, one that
appreciates life and everything around it and goes to great pains to ensure
the happiness of those closest to him. I think that's the film's most
long-lasting legacy. It’s able to take the nihilism out of adolescent
solitude and sluggishness and make it a period to savor and enjoy. Some
would rightfully argue that the segue into adulthood is painful, but FERRIS
BUELLER’S DAY OFF insists that this phase can be pleasurable. It’s just all
in your mindset.